There once was a somewhat principled -- even if selfish and
objectionable -- movement in America called Conservatism. But that is
no more: as much a victim of the public relations-named "Reagan
Revolution" as are America's middle and working class and the once
robust economy of the United States.

The modern "conservative"
movement is nothing more than a massively funded and highly effective
communications strategy to shift America into an oligarchy that
functions for the super wealthy through tax cuts and for corporations
through the elimination of safety regulations for the public good and
the privatization of government.

That's not conservatism; that's highway robbery. It's a crime.

All
this came about through the organized strategy and financing of wealthy
financiers and corporations to build a network of think tanks,
media-owned outlets, reporters toting the oligarchy line on the
"benefits" of unrestrained "free trade," public relations initiatives,
and front organizations to move America from an evolutionary society
relying on the strength of innovation and a dynamic educated middle
class to a relatively static society in which those at the top are in a
members-only club growing obese with wealth while kicking others down
from the ladder to the top and demanding tithes from them.

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The
most vital cudgel used to achieve this economic and social imbalance
that stultifies the American nation and is immoral to its founding
principles is the notion of "centrism." It is beat into us by
Republican and Democratic politicians (Rahm Emanuel and the White House
being current exemplars), the corporate mainstream media, and, of
course, the relentlessly effective GOP echo chamber.

What is
"centrism" other than an artificial metaphor, given that America is
confronting so many issues and that the vast majority of society wants
to move forward, not backward. What most Americans want is not static
"centrism," but movement ahead. That is the conundrum that corporate
journalism, subject to the goals of its owners can't explain: how a
society that allegedly is "conservative" is fed up with the gridlock in
Washington that won't produce change.

After all, socalled
"Conservatism" is the opposite of progress. It is moving backwards
instead of forwards. The world, however, doesn't stop -- and the
immoral assertion of "centrism" as the trope that politicians use to
stifle America's advancement is allowing other nations like China,
India and a United Europe to catapult past us.

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To prevent
the continued development of a prosperous society that benefits more
than a privileged few, the GOP developed a massive propaganda machine
of everything from think tanks, to publishing houses, to "stalking
horses" in whom they invested -- like General Electric and some
California plutocrats did in Ronald Reagan. The Republicans lured --
primarily through television and radio -- millions of financially
threatened working and out of work Americans through fear and
scapegoating to blame liberals and alien "hordes" for their plight
instead of the global corporations who were stealing their jobs and
shipping them offshore in the middle of the night.

Then the
corporate media and timid Democrats in D.C., who get their share of
corporate pay-offs to do the bidding of companies loyal now only to
gross profiteering and risk taking and not to the U.S., created the
notion that somehow all this pollster labeling of political positions
indicated that we were a "centrist" nation as if it were some sort of
marker you could find in a corn field in Kansas. The profound problem
for the ruling elites in D.C. and their corporate mainstream cohorts is
that when you ask Americans on individual issues what their preferences
are, they lean decidedly toward government involvement in advancing the
interests and achievement of the nation.

America prided itself on
breaking away from the fixed and stultifying inherited upper class rule
of Europe, only now to have an interest group with such massive amounts
of funds to create a "natural order" of winners and losers; in essence,
to reverse the American Revolution.

That's not "centrist" or "conservative"; it is immoral, even treasonous.

Ask
the South American nations who threw off governments that the U.S.
supported because they were, in essence, subsidiaries of American
corporations. Now, the majority of South America is ruled by populist
leaders responsive to the needs of their people before the needs of
wealthy magnates and U.S. companies that span the globe.

Ask the people of the Iberian Peninsula who long ago threw off dictatorships and elected populist governments.

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No,
the "center" is what "we the people" make of it and what true leaders
can mold in the way of vision and persuasion. It evolves; it mutates;
at its best it reaches for our highest aspirations, but it takes
inspiration, understandable language, and the strength to vanquish with
hope the fears evoked by demagogues.

The created fiction of the "center" is used as an excuse for inaction on behalf of America's obscenely wealthy interests.

If
you look at how phony the concept is, just think what the Republicans
did with a post World War II society that saw most of America (with the
exception of minorities) move forward and the development of a broad
middle class. The "Reagan Revolution" moved that "center" to the far
right, stealing from the working and middle class through completely
unnecessary tax cuts for the wealthy and using propaganda techniques to
poison people against government, while giving a free pass to
corporations who acted with callous and pre-meditated indifference
toward their U.S. workforces and obligations to the common good.